Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: General Battuta on February 08, 2010, 05:03:46 pm
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I'm all for talent first.. Even if i have none, it'll make the end product that much more special :D
We have forty-two roles in total, I believe, and that's counting every single minor player, so I'm pretty sure everyone will find their place in this...so long as nine of them are women.
33 to 9? Good lord! Considered gender-swapping some of them?
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mostly men in the military afaik. Yes, that is my pathetic excuse for them to let this slide, but it's up to them.
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Not in the GTVA, where the gender ratio even in elite boarding parties is pretty good, and where the pilot corps is, if not quite 50-50, at least 1/3rd female (and the Vasudans do better at 50/50, I believe.)
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Where do those figures come from, Battuta?
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Personas, and the Hallfight cutscene.
If logic held they'd both be 50/50.
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AHA!
^I cite fanon!
<Thaeris, suddenly stops, looks about, and slightly regrets stooping to your level to point out some type of fanon, no matter how rational or sensible it may be...>
:p
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Correlation does not imply causation. Just because there are roughly equal numbers of pilot personas for mission design does not mean that there are equal numbers of pilots for each gender. We have no canon figures on the matter.
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Personas, and the Hallfight cutscene.
If logic held they'd both be 50/50.
If logic held they'd both be 100/0. But computer games are seldom entirely logical. :) We have to work with what we're given.
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Personas, and the Hallfight cutscene.
If logic held they'd both be 50/50.
If logic held they'd both be 100/0. But computer games are seldom entirely logical. :) We have to work with what we're given.
Excuse me?
Women aren't uniformly better pilots than men (which is I hope what you're suggesting), and men certainly aren't uniformly better infantry (though they mostly are.)
AHA!
^I cite fanon!
<Thaeris, suddenly stops, looks about, and slightly regrets stooping to your level to point out some type of fanon, no matter how rational or sensible it may be...>
:p
Persona distributions are perfectly canonical. Interpretations of them are, of course, up for discussion, but there's no denying that of the five Terran pilot personas two are female, and of the boarding party in Hallfight at least one was a woman.
And I know you're better than petty personal attacks. Salve the sore ego and keep this on the level.
Correlation does not imply causation. Just because there are roughly equal numbers of pilot personas for mission design does not mean that there are equal numbers of pilots for each gender. We have no canon figures on the matter.
Nice try, but this has nothing to do with correlation or causation (go look up the terms before you throw them about.) What we have instead is called a 'representative sample.'
Actually, seriously, let me do a triple take and look at this again. What are you even trying to say? Nobody's attempting to establish a relationship between two variables here: there's only one.
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Personas, and the Hallfight cutscene.
If logic held they'd both be 50/50.
If logic held they'd both be 100/0. But computer games are seldom entirely logical. :) We have to work with what we're given.
Excuse me?
Women aren't uniformly better pilots than men (which is I hope what you're suggesting), and men certainly aren't uniformly better infantry (though they mostly are.)
You need to think through the larger social implications instead of the narrow focus of whether a man and a woman are equally capable of performing a particular job.
At the time FS1 begins, the Terrans and Vasudans had been involved in a grueling war, with no end in sight, for fourteen years. The war had the perceived (if, perhaps, not real) threat of annihilation, or indefinite subjugation, of the losing side. Then the Shivans came along and started blowing ships up left and right, and glassing colony worlds, and annihilation started actually happening before everyone's eyes. By some miracle the Shivans are stopped and disappear for 32 years, but there is constant vigilance for when they might come back. Eventually the Shivans do return, and not only do they pulverize an already-weakened fleet, they obliterate an entire star system.
So in all FreeSpace eras during which the games are set, there is a widespread legitimate fear for the very survival of each species. In this situation any society with an ounce of self-preservation would have all available females of child-bearing age safely planetside making babies as fast as possible. Having a large family would, in fact, be seen as patriotic. It would be considered the height of idiocy to send a perfectly fertile female out to her death in a rickety one-person fighter.
And this would be orders of magnitude more important for the Vasudans, as they lost four billion people when Vasuda Prime was attacked.
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I like your thinking Goob. Come run England for a bit plox.
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Frankly? I’d prefer extinction.
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**** no.
The re-subjugation of females would do more political, economic, military and cultural damage than the loss of half the planets in the Alliance.
Women are not baby machines. Population does not win ****.
If the Shivans are coming it doesn't matter if you have ten million or ten trillion people on your worlds: they'll all burn real nicely. You need the infrastructure to build a military, the science to keep it going, and a citizenry that'll stand for the war. All of which require the best and the brightest, not a bunch of wombs on legs.
Depopulation is not the concern here. (Hell, overpopulation probably is.)
So, in this situation? Any society with an ounce of self-preservation would be doing its level best to prevent that scenario, because it means the loss of half the skilled workforce and an unsustainable, reckless population boom.
I cannot imagine the catastrophe you'd get by cutting the skilled candidate pool for military and industrial-critical jobs in half. And no, you couldn't fill that gap with male candidates without dropping qualifications.
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I cannot imagine the catastrophe you'd get by cutting the skilled candidate pool for military and industrial-critical jobs in half.
Oh jeez, I dunno if it would be by half. I'm not condoning Goob's thinking, but being an FJ Pilot simply doesn't appeal to as many women as it does men. Go no further than today's Air Forces. Or the fields that people who make good pilots typically come from. How many female tradies do you see on a daily basis?
Sure, there'd be women, but I don't think, even with the threat of extinction, that the gender ratio of pilots in the Alliance would be 50-50. Somewhere close, possibly.
EDIT: It would be considered the height of idiocy to send a perfectly fertile female out to her death in a rickety one-person fighter.
Where have we ever seen the Alliance adopt anything close to this kind of thinking?
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Nice assumption there. I like how you assume that today's skewed gender ratio (less than half a century after the option became available) is because it 'doesn't appeal to women'.
Today's Air Forces have steadily increasing numbers of women. The female candidates for the Mercury program were far more experienced and capable than the men.
Moreover, it would never happen. It's akin to saying 'with extinction so close, we can't afford to pay our workers. The logical thing to do is to enslave a quarter of the population again.'
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So in all FreeSpace eras during which the games are set, there is a widespread legitimate fear for the very survival of each species. In this situation any society with an ounce of self-preservation would have all available females of child-bearing age safely planetside making babies as fast as possible. Having a large family would, in fact, be seen as patriotic. It would be considered the height of idiocy to send a perfectly fertile female out to her death in a rickety one-person fighter.
NEWWW ZEEEEAALAND!!!
:lol:
Furthermore Battuta, you'll note my previous post was mostly in jest. However, I do find that the "logical musings" I've devised in the past, no matter how sound, were often critized by none other than yourself. Regardless, I hope I've not offended you.
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Adding elements to canon is fanon. Acknowledging the gender ratios present in the Hallfight cutscene and the pilot .anis is not.
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That's still very circumstantial - there's no hard numbers to go by.
I'm not saying it's not a good assesment, but there's not enough evidence to validate it as canon. I personally can "roll with it," but declaring it as fact is a little shady. Put it into your own fiction and no one will argue with it. :nod:
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Fiction rarely supplies hard numbers. The only information available points to Battuta's conclusion, so what's the alternative?
To answer the original question: most of those 33 male roles are minor, and those are being cast using templates. Gender for those parts isn't set in stone. The ratio of women to men will be roughly proportional to that of the auditions we receive. I do agree that the weighting is poor as it stands.
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I'm hoping for a C-list role at least ^_^
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Fiction rarely supplies hard numbers. The only information available points to Battuta's conclusion, so what's the alternative?
To answer the original question: most of those 33 male roles are minor, and those are being cast using templates. Gender for those parts isn't set in stone. The ratio of women to men will be roughly proportional to that of the auditions we receive. I do agree that the weighting is poor as it stands.
That's awesome. So long as they're open to individuals of either sex I think it's perfectly fair.
That's still very circumstantial - there's no hard numbers to go by.
I'm not saying it's not a good assesment, but there's not enough evidence to validate it as canon. I personally can "roll with it," but declaring it as fact is a little shady. Put it into your own fiction and no one will argue with it. :nod:
Again: representative sample. The alternative to taking these ratios as canon is to suggest that all the squadrons the player is in are somehow gender skewed.
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Meh. These are petty arguments. Everyone has said what they've needed to say.
I see I've been considered for the Silent Eye, Ransom. That's good to hear. I might be in the market for a decent mic soon, so I should be able to make some better recordings if I get the part. :cool:
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Graceless concession, but all right.
I appreciate the handling of the issue on Ransom's part. I suspect there were actors whose decision on whether to apply was contingent on the response to the gender ratio problem.
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Reading this, I guess someone has a "gender ratio" problem :pimp: :p
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I've re-read the first page, where does it say who's considered for which roles?
Edit- lets leave the gender/problems out of this k?
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It's been handled. While most of the roles will probably still end up male assuming casting on HLP, so long as they're open to women it's fine by me.
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If I had been around to see this discussion in-progress, it would have been split and moved/locked in short order, but seeing as how it seems to have been settled, I happily won't have to do that.
I have to say, though, looking back on this, I'm not even sure why this line of discussion was perpetuated in the first place. The purpose of this thread is to round up Transcend auditions from the HLP forum population. I don't know about anyone else, but last time I looked around, the vast majority of the HLP members of the male persuasion; likewise, the vast majority of auditions received will likely be of the same persuasion. Unless one were to undertake the not-insignificant effort of reaching out to a number of voice-acting forums and specifically asking for more female auditions, the expectation would be that most of the roles will be going to males just based on what's submitted. This isn't a social/storyline/what-have-you issue in the least; as Ransom alluded to in that last post of his, the default roles reflect the expectations of getting everything finished some time before three years have passed.
Seriously, guys. Let's try to confine the PC srs bzns to GD as much as possible, so that the rest of the folders can be reserved for far more enjoyable pursuits, like discussing nerds speaking in funny voices to provide content for more nerds to create mods that can be played by even more nerds. :p
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Cut it out.
This was not 'PC srs bzns'. This was a genuine concern about a large number of the roles being closed to females when they didn't need to be. Ransom completely assuaged that concern by clarifying that many of the roles were open to both genders.
I know for a fact that there were actors planning not to audition if this issue was not handled correctly. It was therefore germane.
Additionally, it will be faster, higher-quality, and significantly easier to recruit voice actors from other sources - many of which are female, probably more than half - than to conduct this effort within HLP.
If you'd read the post immediately before yours that should have been clear.
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Topic split.
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Double post-
Why's my last one in this split? Also motion to move this to general freespace or similar.
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Conversation may be over, but you were cherry picking a bit there weren't you Battuta? There're 5 CM head anis, 4 of which are male (it's 5 from 6 if you count Bosch). The pilot head anis seem skewed towards males as well - it's hard to tell in those helmets, but it looks to me like only TP2 and TP5 are female, out of the 8 head anis we're given. Only 2 of the 9 pilot images you can choose from is female (although I'll grant, this may have been [V] anticipating their audience somewhat). There are no female pilots at all in the Command Briefing cutscene from FS1. There are no identifiably female figures walking around the mainhalls. Only one of the squadron leaders in FS2 was female. And from what I can tell, only one of the terran pilot vocal personas is female (Check Stu_fs2.vp - Only the wavs starting with 2 are female (and 7, but they're Vasudan). In fact, running through the VP there seems to be a distinct and vlear bias towards male voices throughout, which tallies neatly with what I remember from playing through the game. There's clearly a gender disparity.
Now, the likelihood, in [V]s case, is that they were trying to depict a militaristic feeling, and one of the things you get in both the reality of the military and (perhaps to a greater degree) public perception of the military is a gender disparity, skewed towards men. Nonetheless, I think the idea of a 50/50 split just isn't suggested by the majority of canon material.
Also, just for the record, I always strongly skew the ratio in my missions towards males for the very practical reason that it's historically been a damned sight easier to find a male voice actor than a female one. No point ignoring practicality for the sake of appearing PC.
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Goodness gracious, I never knew that a matter of semantics can snowball so quickly into some hostile situation.
I don't recall saying concretely that "only nine of these forty-two roles will be available for female voiceactors." My statement was that I was sure that we'll find a place for everyone who auditions, assuming that nine of them are women. My intention was not to shutter out female voiceactors after all of the female roles had been filled. My apologies that this concerned you so, but in directing voiceacting efforts, my ideal was that there would be an exceptional voiceactor for every available role, without having to make any of them play multiple characters. We had nine intended female roles, and I hoped to point this out so as to allow the female voice talent to see that we still had plenty of spots available that would be ideal for them. My motive was never to shut out women auditioning for roles once those spots were taken. There are many cases where women have played male-intended roles and have proven to be so good that male actors have seemed substandard by comparison. This knowledge is not and was never lost on me.
When I typed the statement in question, I never meant to make anyone think that we were going to set a gender-based quota. But I know that the implications of this unintentional message were dangerous. I apologize again for not recognizing that this seemingly innocent statement could be interpreted as sexual discrimination. This argument could have been avoided had I made things clearer.
I hope we can come to an understanding and move on with this said. I don't want to leave a bad taste in anyone's mouths because of this.
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No, that's all in line with my claims. I didn't suggest a 50/50 split at any point. I was however under the impression that two of the five Terran wingman personas were female (thus the 'about one-third claim', apparently it's more like 20-25%), not one. Of the eight Terran head ANIs two are female, and of the pilot selects I believe your numbers are correct - all of which are in line with what I cited. I'd always assumed that higher officer ranks were more gender-skewed since the Terrans 'share many of the prejudices we have today.'
Female voice actors are in my experience a lot easier to find.
I don't give a **** about appearing PC (whatever that means), but appearing realistic is nice. Opening the minor roles to both genders is what I was after, and what is being done.
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Goodness gracious, I never knew that a matter of semantics can snowball so quickly into some hostile situation.
I don't recall saying concretely that "only nine of these forty-two roles will be available for female voiceactors." My statement was that I was sure that we'll find a place for everyone who auditions, assuming that nine of them are women. My intention was not to shutter out female voiceactors after all of the female roles had been filled. My apologies that this concerned you so, but in directing voiceacting efforts, my ideal was that there would be an exceptional voiceactor for every available role, without having to make any of them play multiple characters. We had nine intended female roles, and I hoped to point this out so as to allow the female voice talent to see that we still had plenty of spots available that would be ideal for them. My motive was never to shut out women auditioning for roles once those spots were taken. There are many cases where women have played male-intended roles and have proven to be so good that male actors have seemed substandard by comparison. This knowledge is not and was never lost on me.
When I typed the statement in question, I never meant to make anyone think that we were going to set a gender-based quota. But I know that the implications of this unintentional message were dangerous. I apologize again for not recognizing that this seemingly innocent statement could be interpreted as sexual discrimination. This argument could have been avoided had I made things clearer.
I hope we can come to an understanding and move on with this said. I don't want to leave a bad taste in anyone's mouths because of this.
It's already been resolved, as a quick review of the thread should show you.
A single post from Ransom took care of it.
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If you'd read the post immediately before yours that should have been clear.
I did read that post, along with every other in the thread, and I called the situation as I saw it. I didn't see FoxtrotTango's original post in any way carrying negative undertones, especially not to the extent that you originally suggested, and the idea that he felt it necessary to apologize for said post (albeit after the issue had been resolved to your satisfaction) is a bit disheartening. You say you don't recognize the definition of "PC," but I think this example provides a decent one: the need to always be hyper-sensitive about every single statement one makes, lest one single person out there take personal offense at a misconception of it and respond with ire. There are significant issues in this area today that do need to be addressed, but maybe I'm alone in thinking that a comment about the expected numerical returns of a VA audition effort, or a single blonde joke in a thread that's explicitly about "stupid jokes,"are not among them.
You say that female actors have been easier to find "in your experience," but I would forward that the Blue Planet experience wasn't exactly typical of fan-voiced campaigns in this community, which have primarily relied mostly on HLP members to fill their roles. This specific thread posting was on HLP itself, not on the other sites that Foxtrot and Ransom may be looking at, which would further suggest the expected results of this particular aspect of the effort. Regardless of that, I hope you recognize that it's completely the campaign-maker's prerogative to determine how many (if any) specific roles should be allotted to each gender, just as it is your own prerogative to disagree with this and not participate in the effort if it isn't to your liking.
At this point, I feel that this thread is definitely better off either being moved to GD or locked entirely, depending on whether or not you think it's worth continuing. I'll leave it to you to decide.
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Hmm. This thread seems to have diverged from what my post was about (or my post was an outlier in the overall thread). Nevertheless, to respond to Battuta's and Rian's points...
Frankly? I’d prefer extinction.
I was going to reply only to Battuta but I just had to ask you about this post. Are you honestly saying that you would prefer the extinction of your entire species, given the choice between that and having the women stay safely out of the war to raise families? Don't you think that's rather... well, selfish?
Especially considering that raising a family is just about the best job there is. Furthermore, it's the only job that's absolutely essential to society.
The re-subjugation of females would do more political, economic, military and cultural damage than the loss of half the planets in the Alliance.
Umm... no. Seriously, think about what you're saying. The loss of half the planets in the Alliance -- let's be conservative and say one planet per system, for a total of 30, half of which is 15 -- fifteen planets, with all their colonies, populations, economies, militaries, and cultures?
Compare that to the necessity of war causing women to be ordered to remain at home and raise their families. I really think you're skewing the damage forecast here.
If the Shivans are coming it doesn't matter if you have ten million or ten trillion people on your worlds: they'll all burn real nicely. You need the infrastructure to build a military, the science to keep it going, and a citizenry that'll stand for the war. All of which require the best and the brightest, not a bunch of wombs on legs.
All of that requires people. The more people you have, the higher the probability that someone will come up with a new technology or a research breakthrough. Also, the more people you have, the more colonies you can create in the event of one (or more) being devastated like Vasuda Prime.
Depopulation is not the concern here. (Hell, overpopulation probably is.)
So, in this situation? Any society with an ounce of self-preservation would be doing its level best to prevent that scenario, because it means the loss of half the skilled workforce and an unsustainable, reckless population boom.
Actually, depopulation is very much a concern, since a) it had been happening for 14 years prior to FS1; b) happened galaxy-wide in the Great War; c) happened on an enormous scale in Vasuda Prime. The concern is not overpopulation; the concern is that you've lost a ton of good officers and citizens and you're severely short on manpower. (Not just military manpower, but economic and social manpower as well.) You need to rebuild the population in order to get back to your previous strength. And you'd better do it fast, before the Shivans show up again.
This is not merely a theoretical concern. Germany temporarily authorized polygamy following the Thirty Years' War because so much of its male population had been killed. Likewise, Chechnya lobbied to recognize polygamy in 2006 because the rebellion against Russia has led to a significant imbalance in the male:female ratio.
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Frankly? I’d prefer extinction.
I was going to reply only to Battuta but I just had to ask you about this post. Are you honestly saying that you would prefer the extinction of your entire species, given the choice between that and having the women stay safely out of the war to raise families? Don't you think that's rather... well, selfish?
Especially considering that raising a family is just about the best job there is. Furthermore, it's the only job that's absolutely essential to society.
You think that raising a family is the best job there is. Are you a stay-at home parent? Have you abandoned your own career, your own ambitions to raise a couple dozen kids? If not, you have no authority on which to make this claim, which I find paternalistic, condescending, and offensive. If you are, what makes you think your experience is universal?
Consider also that a single woman is not going to give birth to more than ten or twenty children in her lifetime, even if she does nothing else for the entire fertile period of her life. The limitations of the human body might draw the line long before that. Now suppose that woman instead joins the military and makes a decent showing for herself. No, she’s not going to turn back the tide all by herself, but as has already been pointed out, this is a war in which whole planets are at stake. She’s a member of an enormous military force, but that force is dwarfed by the populations of the planets they’re defending. If they prevent the Shivans from destroying even one planet, her share of the lives saved is hundreds or thousands. And you want her to spend her life enslaved by her womb?
Think about what you’re saying. You’re saying that even if I was the kind of pilot who could disarm a Sathanas and save a fleet, humanity would be better served if I stayed home to mind the younglings. What kind of logic is that?
Besides all that, this is a war. You don’t need people twenty years in the future when all those babies grow up, you need them to hold the Shivans off now. And if you restrict yourself to half your able-bodied population, then odds are those babies are going to be space dust long before they get big enough to fly a ship. If you win, your pilots can all settle down and breed afterward. If you don’t, then it won’t make a damn bit of difference. This is the future, ffs. If population was that much of an issue they’d find a way to grow their babies in vats or something.
Your position is regressive in the extreme, it completely dismisses the contributions of millions of women that have nothing to do with their reproductive capacities, and I find it repellent. I stand by my earlier claim. Survival alone is worth nothing if we become no better than the enemy we fight, and a society that would entertain enslaving half its population in this way does not deserve to survive.
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Rian is correct.
Ban all women from combat roles and you must, by extent, fill those roles with lesser-qualified men. Instead of taking the top 20% of the men and the top 20% of the women, you take the top 40% of the men. Assuming equal skill distributions, your people are now on average less talented.
You lose more people that way than you gain by having those women reproducing.
Not only is your position misogynistic, it is misandristic. Why should under-qualified men be forced to serve in the military when there are women who could do their jobs with a better chance of survival? Why are men expendable and women not? Expanding the population does not require the use of every available fertile female - you'd end up with an underclass of undereducated starving runts. Fewer, higher-quality families are a better bet.
And yes, I firmly believe that losing fifteen colonies would be better for the human race. That blow could be recovered from in time (as it was when Sol was lost, along with the bulk of the human population and industrial base.)
...regardless of that, I hope you recognize that it's completely the campaign-maker's prerogative to determine how many (if any) specific roles should be allotted to each gender...
I requested a clarification: were there roles outside the nine specified open to women? The campaign creator told me that there were. I am satisfied.
My complaint was a practical one. It had nothing to do with expected returns, and everything to do with barring women from roles they didn't need to be barred from.
I have no idea what direction you're coming at this from. The fact that ambiguous roles should be open to both genders appears to me to be the most fundamental common sense.
As for this remark:
or a single blonde joke in a thread that's explicitly about "stupid jokes,"are not among them.
It took a great many years and a great deal of scientific evidence to bring me to my position on such matters. I stand by it.
I find it particularly odd that this debate is continuing. The question was resolved with Ransom's very first response on the topic.
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I was going to reply only to Battuta but I just had to ask you about this post. Are you honestly saying that you would prefer the extinction of your entire species, given the choice between that and having the women stay safely out of the war to raise families? Don't you think that's rather... well, selfish?
Especially considering that raising a family is just about the best job there is. Furthermore, it's the only job that's absolutely essential to society.
You think that raising a family is the best job there is. Are you a stay-at home parent? Have you abandoned your own career, your own ambitions to raise a couple dozen kids? If not, you have no authority on which to make this claim, which I find paternalistic, condescending, and offensive. If you are, what makes you think your experience is universal?
Let me first note that you seized on the one sentence of mine that expressed an opinion, that being "raising a family is the best job there is". You ignored the sentence in the same paragraph that was a fact. You also ignored my response to the opinion you expressed in your previous post, that being "frankly, I’d prefer extinction".
If you will elaborate on the reasons for your opinion (or retract it), I will also elaborate on the reasons for my opinion.
Consider also that a single woman is not going to give birth to more than ten or twenty children in her lifetime, even if she does nothing else for the entire fertile period of her life. The limitations of the human body might draw the line long before that. Now suppose that woman instead joins the military and makes a decent showing for herself. No, she’s not going to turn back the tide all by herself, but as has already been pointed out, this is a war in which whole planets are at stake. She’s a member of an enormous military force, but that force is dwarfed by the populations of the planets they’re defending. If they prevent the Shivans from destroying even one planet, her share of the lives saved is hundreds or thousands.
You refute your own argument here. You're talking about the potential performance of one soldier. However, if that soldier instead stays home and raises a family, she can raise "ten or twenty" soldiers. And the potential performance of ten or twenty soldiers will always be greater than the potential performance of one soldier.
Besides all that, this is a war. You don’t need people twenty years in the future when all those babies grow up, you need them to hold the Shivans off now. And if you restrict yourself to half your able-bodied population, then odds are those babies are going to be space dust long before they get big enough to fly a ship. If you win, your pilots can all settle down and breed afterward. If you don’t, then it won’t make a damn bit of difference.
You don't fight a war by committing 100% of your forces right off the bat. You send them in by waves. This is so that fresh soldiers are continually rotate into the front lines, and new recruits are always being trained.
The Terran-Vasudan war lasted fourteen years. Suppose that Terran Command had followed the strategy you advocate; by the time FS1 rolls around, you'd win the Great War but sacrifice your best people in the process. (Remember that the ideal age of a soldier is also the ideal age for a woman to bear children.) You may win the Great War, but what happens when FS2 rolls around 32 years later? Oops... you forgot to raise the next generation of people, and you have no military to stand up to the Shivans.
This is the future, ffs. If population was that much of an issue they’d find a way to grow their babies in vats or something.
Nice hypothetical there. We can't grow fully-grown soldiers in vats now, we won't be able to for the foreseeable future, and there's no indication that the GTVA can do that in the FreeSpace universe.
Ban all women from combat roles and you must, by extent, fill those roles with lesser-qualified men. Instead of taking the top 20% of the men and the top 20% of the women, you take the top 40% of the men. Assuming equal skill distributions, your people are now on average less talented.
You lose more people that way than you gain by having those women reproducing.
If we accept for the sake of argument that men and women have equal skill distributions in combat, you're still ignoring the other side of the equation: men and women do not have equal skill distributions in giving birth.
Incidentally, a 20% increase in the number of child bearers will add a huge number of children, more than offsetting the conjectured 20% change in skill from "best-qualified" to "lesser-qualified" in your pool of soldiers.
And yes, I firmly believe that losing fifteen colonies would be better for the human race. That blow could be recovered from in time (as it was when Sol was lost, along with the bulk of the human population and industrial base.)
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the man who would sacrifice fifteen worlds on the altar of political correctness.
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After that last remark I do not feel that I am able to safely continue with this debate. Nor will I continue any discourse with a party so ignorant of modern society, one who believes that numbers are somehow relevant in a world predicated on education, development, and skilled labor. A man who actually advocates that a skilled, elite woman is more valuable for her ability to produce ten children than her ability to save ten thousand or ten billion lives. (Honestly. If Alpha 1 had been a woman...and found herself at home caring for the kids instead of in the cockpit...)
I'm tempted again and again to edit this post to gut your argument on the factual level, to point out how minor the casualties in these wars are compared to the size of the human population. But I simply will not be drawn into a debate on that level when I know that your attitudes here are not grounded in a factual analysis.
The willfull, rationalized retrogressive ignorance it takes to justify this position - and the thought put into rationalizing it - disturbs me deeply. You can shout that I'm unable to respond and therefore quitting with drama, but the fact is that I'm not going to waste my time breaking my head against this kind of attitude.
It would have been one thing if you had advocated economic and political incentives for large families. Instead, you argued for a cultural-level sanction against women in combat roles, regardless of their qualifications.
I prefer to wait for such attitudes to die out. I cannot maintain a professional relationship with anyone who advocates the resubjugation of half the human race.
I cannot in good conscience participate in a community under this leadership. I will consider my positions and whether to relinquish my current responsibilities as Global Moderator.
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You know what, I’m done here. I don’t feel comfortable contributing to this forum if this is the attitude espoused by its leadership. Enjoy your boys’ club.
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While what Goober says is fine from a purely biological and statistical standpoint (don't argue this - the limiting factor to a population's growth is the number of females - even if you only have one male, your species would be 'ok', and the same cannot be said about having only a single female), it is rather tactless and well, I guess morally wrong (and rings of old-fashioned misogynistic thinking).
I suppose if the loss of a given percentage of the population was imminent and unavoidable, however, that sacrificing males would be preferential to sacrificing females. Think of it that way. If the females were volunteering for it though, it wouldn't be right to stop them from doing so. (?)
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There are fewer people directly involved in warfare in FreeSpace than in most wars in human history.
The fundamental notion that anything which happened in FreeSpace barring repeated massive planetary bombardment could cause a species-wide demographic crisis is so laughable as to almost render the ineffectual bluster of the proposed response equally risible.
In 14 years of war with the Vasudans - 14 years of low-intensity war that mostly involved fighters, bombers, and warships - I'm willing to bet fewer people were killed than in a single year of World War I.
Never mind the useless demographic crisis you'd have when your 'baby boom' of uneducated runts matured with no jobs for them to fill, no one to teach them how to do it, no housing, no food, and no education...because none of the skilled women who could have helped with those problems were available.
Imagine society today without anything invented or discovered by women in the last hundred years alone. It would be very, very bad...and that's with women already subjugated.
I promised myself I wouldn't do this so I don't know why I'm ****ing doing it. If it weren't for my responsibilities to BP I'd have followed Rian's example five minutes ago.
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No sane people would be keen on having children at a time of war. After the war there are baby booms instead.
Having women at home would therefore not increase the population.
Moreover even if you forced them to have babies (!) it would not help with the war effort except if you assumed a long, long war of attrition that lasts over 18 years.
Then you have to assume that you can hold out for 18 years with just the men fighting the good fight and women having babies.
Even further you would have to assume that bare manpower would help at all, which is unlikely since what you need is trained professionals. That's what was the main limiting factor in, say, Battle of Britain; they simply could not produce pilots at the same rate they would produce fighter airplanes. Today, this would be even more disproportionate. Even infantry would suffer from this; it's not like you can simply hand out a shield and a spear these days and tell your boys to stand in a line on some field. They need to be trained, and they need to have the professionals to train them.
Speculating even further, if your purpose for subjecting the female population to this is not winning the war but saving the species, you would have to assume you have the capability to hide the women somewhere and keep them safe even if you end up losing the war completely and utterly with the rest of the population (men) fighting it.
In the specific case of Shivans, I find that supremely unlikely.
So, strategically I would rather gather the most capable forces available, independent of gender, and do the best to fight off the threat to the species with all I could muster. If the effort fails, so be it. End of the line, everybody off.
If it got truely desperate, relocating small communities of balanced gender distribution (preferably consisting of couples in solid relationships, exhibiting different training and talents required for survival) to some remote planet and cutting all communications could be the best option. Even then it would be unlikely there would be any place to hide.
So ignoring all this speculation, there's still the matter of ethics to question. What sort of government would have the power to essentially imprison half of it's population to the task of producing offspring?
I don't really want to godwin the thread but considering how much damage has been already done I doubt it can make it worse, so... I can't help but draw parallels to the aryan ideal of woman.
:blah:
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Let me highlight a critical point that I brought up and Herra brought up too:
If the entire GTVA military were made of women it would not represent a demographic threat to human society, because the number of people in danger is that small.
Given this fact there is absolutely zero reason not to take the best you can get of either sex. Because you can damn well bet that the small number of women you skim off for service will save more lives than they would produce as mothers.
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Please, everyone, I don't want you to throw away your statuses and positions based on a debate that stemmed from an innocent comment I made. I don't even know where the whole "women would be better at home/women would be better on the front lines" debate came from, but I do know that it's causing major strife and is really hurting relations across the anyone still bothering to participate in it. As the one who started it, I implore all of you to please finish it, bury it, and let this issue die. It's a fight that has no place here and every moment longer that I let the accusations fly is a great failure on my part.
This is an issue that will keep dividing us until we're warring over it. And because of what? A few words that have already been wiped clean of the implications that stained them? I want all of you to stop acting like this is a matter that even deserves your attention. Let's get back to reality and leave this bickering behind.
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Actually, I'd prefer that Goober5000 not disregard this thread because it's inconvenient to him.
Furthermore, I'm well aware that this debate could be easily taken as 'blown out of proportion' or 'oversensitive'. It's easy to say things like that when you don't have a stake in the debate or the outcome.
I recognize that Goober5000's positions are, as best as he knows, fair-minded and rational, and that he intended no malice by them. Unfortunately, implicit attitudes are held without awareness, and sometimes the shock of seeing how other people react to them can help in their reexamination.
No matter how innocently intended, the assertions Goober5000 made here were so preposterous that, until he further clarifies them, I cannot help but see them as (unintentional, yes) sexism.
A moment's clear thought should have made it obvious why no such demographic crisis would exist, and, even if it did, why permitting women in the military would not make a whit of difference.
To be honest I'm concerned that Goob is just going to write this off as 'emotional venting' and 'irrational hysteria' and refuse to engage with some very real concerns here.
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Okay, **** it. I'm unilaterally moving this thread because I don't want to have to look at it in this folder anymore. Have fun, GD.
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I'm going to keep picking at this because of how bothered I am.
The Terran-Vasudan war lasted fourteen years. Suppose that Terran Command had followed the strategy you advocate; by the time FS1 rolls around, you'd win the Great War but sacrifice your best people in the process.
Goober5000, that is exactly the strategy Terran Command followed during the Terran-Vasudan War and FS1. There were women flying those ships: the best and the brightest.
And I'm pretty ****ing glad I didn't get a second-rate wingman on 'Good Luck' because the best woman wasn't available.
Strangely, I'm not seeing any demographic apocalypse by the time FS2 rolls around.
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am a bit nauseous at reading goober's posts.
if it ever came to being forced to give birth over and over or extinction, i'd put the gun in my mouth myself, thanks
and thats all i got to say about that
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Y'know, some of this is exactly what I meant when I used the phrase "hyper-sensitivity" earlier. Like, I don't care if you think what Goober said is the worst thing ever, and that he's a horrible person for doing so. That's fine. That's your prerogative. But in the end...it's just one ****ing post. Take a look outside at the world we live in. I don't think it's any exaggeration to say that there are millions, if not tens of millions, of women alive today who live in what is essentially a state of sexual slavery. That's right now, in the real world. Not in some stupid theoretical future where we need to replenish the human population in a hurry. Now. And yet one asinine post is what people choose to get incredibly over-dramatic and apoplectic about, and even threaten to leave the forums over. I'll never ****ing understand it. Not at all.
Seriously, people. Try getting really ****ing angry about the real **** going on out there today before you start worry about some whack-job opinion that will never see the light of day. That's the only way we'll ever do anything about this ****-hole of a planet.
(...why did this wind up in GenFS? I moved it to GenDisc because it pretty much screams that, unless someone thought otherwise.)
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You're right, you don't understand it.
It's not a zero-sum game. Making an issue of this here does not deplete efforts somewhere else. It does not make someone less angry about injustice elsewhere.
You do not dictate my feelings, and it is presumptuous of you to believe that you can determine what I - or what Rian, for that matter - should feel better than we can.
I will determine for myself whether I am becoming over-dramatic or apoplectic. You, however, are not in a position to either understand or dictate what harms others, especially when said factors do not harm you.
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I'm tempted again and again to edit this post to gut your argument on the factual level, to point out how minor the casualties in these wars are compared to the size of the human population. But I simply will not be drawn into a debate on that level when I know that your attitudes here are not grounded in a factual analysis.
They are, indeed, grounded in factual, historical, social, and logical analysis.
The willfull, rationalized retrogressive ignorance it takes to justify this position - and the thought put into rationalizing it - disturbs me deeply. You can shout that I'm unable to respond and therefore quitting with drama, but the fact is that I'm not going to waste my time breaking my head against this kind of attitude.
Hmm. I shall let the thread speak for itself.
It would have been one thing if you had advocated economic and political incentives for large families. Instead, you argued for a cultural-level sanction against women in combat roles, regardless of their qualifications.
Oh, I'm not arguing for a cultural-level sanction. I'm saying that such a situation would arise organically, and naturally, given the conditions at the time. Sure, the government would encourage it via propaganda; but having a large family would become a cultural value. It has happened before and it will happen again. I would not have the power to force such a change, and neither would Rian have the power to prevent it.
I prefer to wait for such attitudes to die out. I cannot maintain a professional relationship with anyone who advocates the resubjugation of half the human race.
I cannot in good conscience participate in a community under this leadership. I will consider my positions and whether to relinquish my current responsibilities as Global Moderator.
Please understand that the personal is not the political; I do not consider my opinion of you to have changed due to this thread. Also, I do not wish for you to relinquish any responsibilities or privileges as a result of a forum debate.
The fundamental notion that anything which happened in FreeSpace barring repeated massive planetary bombardment could cause a species-wide demographic crisis is so laughable as to almost render the ineffectual bluster of the proposed response equally risible.
In 14 years of war with the Vasudans - 14 years of low-intensity war that mostly involved fighters, bombers, and warships - I'm willing to bet fewer people were killed than in a single year of World War I.
Except, you know, we did have planetary bombardment. Canonically. Both in the Terran-Vasudan war (c.f. the Harbinger) and with Shivans (the Lucifer cannons "bombarding colonized worlds"). Furthermore, we know that ground troops were deployed in both wars; one cannot infer ground casualties from space casualties.
Never mind the useless demographic crisis you'd have when your 'baby boom' of uneducated runts matured with no jobs for them to fill, no one to teach them how to do it, no housing, no food, and no education...because none of the skilled women who could have helped with those problems were available.
One of the reasons for having the women stay at home to raise families is so that they can give them such an education. And "stay at home" does not imply "unskilled". Finally, considering the depopulation due to war, the "baby boom" will find jobs waiting for them when they reach adulthood.
So ignoring all this speculation, there's still the matter of ethics to question. What sort of government would have the power to essentially imprison half of it's population to the task of producing offspring?
Raising a family is not "imprisonment". And as I said to Battuta, it would arise naturally from the culture; it wouldn't have to be forced by the government.
To be honest I'm concerned that Goob is just going to write this off as 'emotional venting' and 'irrational hysteria' and refuse to engage with some very real concerns here.
Well, I hope -- based on this thread and the IRC conversation -- that you don't think I'm refusing to engage.
Goober5000, that is exactly the strategy Terran Command followed during the Terran-Vasudan War and FS1. There were women flying those ships: the best and the brightest.
[...]
Strangely, I'm not seeing any demographic apocalypse by the time FS2 rolls around.
That's begging the question. We're discussing the male/female balance of the FreeSpace universe, extrapolating from what we know of the game, all other things being equal. So the lack of demographics, or the canonical head ani distribution, is not relevant here because it's the very variable we're trying to estimate.
(...why did this wind up in GenFS? I moved it to GenDisc because it pretty much screams that, unless someone thought otherwise.)
I moved it, since we're talking about a situation specific to the FreeSpace universe, as opposed to men and women in society in general.
Anyway, I suppose General Battuta and I must agree to disagree. I have not changed my personal or professional opinion of him based on this thread, and still hold him in high regard. I likewise hope that he feels the same way.
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I have spent some time on IRC with Goober5000 trying to hash this out. His last post contains his view, including the belief that this situation will arise organically.
I consider that patently absurd. When the survival of mankind depends on fighter pilots and warship crews, then any intelligent system will focus all its efforts on putting the best people, with the best training and the best equipment, at the tip of the spear.
Barring all women - directly or indirectly - from combat removes 50% of the potential von Richtofens, MacArthurs, Bismarcks and Yorks from the pool. That means a drop in combat effectiveness. It also means that these women will not be available to train later pilots, damaging the effectiveness of the combat arm of the fleet for decades to come.
Putting women in combat has zero costs. None. They can have children once they're rotated home to train new pilots.
Any system which bars women from combat is grossly inefficient compared to one that does not.
The military today is, in complete defiance of Goober5000's predictions, opening as many roles as it can to traditionally sanctioned people: women and homosexuals. This is because they need talent.
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The military today is, in complete defiance of Goober5000's predictions, opening as many roles as it can to traditionally sanctioned people: women and homosexuals. This is because they need talent.
I should clarify that my prediction is for an extrapolated scenario during the era of FreeSpace when the Terran and Vasudan species are facing the real possibility of extinction, not the present day when the human species is unthreatened and thriving.
Furthermore, the "homosexuals in the military" topic is not relevant because this scenario explicitly deals with the preservation of the species. There would be no restriction on homosexuals serving in this situation, for this reason; because they are not biologically critical to producing children, as women are.
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Homosexuals are an example of a class socially barred from military service, then allowed in by need. This supports my thesis that under pressure the military will expand eligibility, not restrict it.
My prediction is also for an extrapolated scenario when the human species is facing extinction (though you have yet to prove that this is so.) Please reread my previous post. You will find your points countered.
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To add to an overwhelming body of evidence.
Operation Thresher killed 504 pilots. Assuming 1/5th female, going off personas, that means 100 dead women in combat roles. We can throw in a few hundred more for warships if you like.
That many women are killed in car crashes every minute in Terran space, I'm sure.
Demographic impact? None.
Furthermore.
Pilots can start at age 19. They will be home to serve as flight instructors within a few years. They can have as many kids as they like then.
Fitness cost of women in combat? Zero. Even if none of them have kids? Still zero on the demographic level. There aren't enough pilots to make a difference.
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Keep in mind, it's fairly obvious that they don't bar women from combat in Freespace - not in the TV War (We have Admiral Shima and the Riviera Station comm officer as the most obvious evidence of that), nor against the Shivans, nor in FS2. But it's also - although not proven - I think strongly indicated that there is still a gender disparity skewed towards males in all three of these eras. The reasons for this - if we ignore any real-world concerns like [V] anticipating a mostly male audience - aren't elaborated on, so we need to guess at them. Personally, I think it's quite likely that you would see a degree of government encouragement of large families and women staying - if not at-home in the chained to the sink sense, at least at home in the "not deployed to Beta Aquilae on a destroyer" sense, for many of the reason's Goobers mentioned. It's not like governments don't encourage population growth through large families - it's happening all over the western world (and first world asian countries like Japan and South Korea), including here in Australia - when you're going through a 14 year long war, such government encouragement would run directly counter to all the recruitment efforts, so you'd lose some of the female recruits through conflicting influences right there. Anyway, if you have an alternative explanation for what we see ingame, I'd love to hear it. No sarcasm or anything, I honestly would.
[EDIT]Wait... you're going with 1/5th... OK... so I'm not exactly sure what this argument is about anymore. Never mind then. Carry on.
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I did some calculations.
If Operation Thresher happened every day for 15 years you would only lose 545,000 women. In 15 years. Not demographically significant at all.
If the Epsilon Pegasi massacre - 16,000 dead women - happened every week for all 18 months of the NTF war, you'd lose about 1 million women. That sounds like a lot, right?
We lost 50 times that to the Spanish flu in 1918. That was 3% of Earth's population at the time...and that population was only 1.6 billion.
No major demographic consequences. No move for crazy breeding. In fact, get this: the Spanish Flu killed mostly young adults, and did so in a 9 month span, just like a bad part of a war. Nobody noticed. Deaths from the flu were confused with deaths from the war.
BlackWolf: I have no issue with promoting big families. What I have an issue with is the suggestion that qualified women would be in any way, directly or indirectly, barred from combat. Goober argues that in 'real life FreeSpace' they would.
I think by now the demographic argument for this concept has been thoroughly trashed.
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Raising a family is not "imprisonment". And as I said to Battuta, it would arise naturally from the culture; it wouldn't have to be forced by the government.
What would arise from the culture spontaneously would of course happen. We just have no way of knowing how the culture would evolve to that point. We might have our expectations, but no one has a way of knowing for sure. Especially in a fictional setting such as FreeSpace, where it can be pretty much how ever the writer wants to fluff it out to be.
I do not know how exactly GTA as a society and culture exists. What we see on screen does suggest some sort of gender disparity like has been pointed out.
Personally, I believe the division between gender roles in professions will continue to diminish, barring any unforeseen events of ultraconservative patriarchal authority figures becoming/staying a prominent factor of humanity's future. And that is something I do not want to happen, so I prefer not to consider that a viable option (YMMV). So no, I don't think the culture would develope into a direction where it would self-impose restrictions for females on combat zones. If this prediction of mine is correct, it would still be possible that there would be a lesser enlistment percentage throughout the female portion of population, but not in such significant numbers as today.
However, earlier on I got the impression that you would advocate officially banning or strongly discouraging females of working in combat sorties (by the virtue of protecting them since only they can give birth to next generation of humans). That would be one way of government sanctioning and, if the underlying logic would be to protect the humanity's ability to reproduce, it wouldn't really work to that end for the reasons that surfaced in the discussion so far; the risk to humanity's reproduction ability by having women in combat is smaller than the risk by not having them there and having less capable men fill the void, which could cause reduced performance and results, and ultimately might even tip the scales so that the faction ends up losing critical engagements and possibly alter the course of the war.
Apparently, others had the same misconception and responded on that assumption.
The biggest issue here are numbers and economical/industrial basis for space warfare.
I don't think it's in any way plausible to have a space fleet that would require an amount of enlisted personnel so big that it would put a significant percentage of the female population at risk, even if the whole fleet was solely made of females. Even if the fate of the whole humanity were in risk, it would be impossible to send even a quarter of whole population to fight effectively against the threat. Industrial capacity could not produce that amount of hardware, and the personnell could not be trained rapidly enough. Having one per cent of the population in combat would be a massive fleet in a population of billions.
Meh. This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. :rolleyes:
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Goober, your argument seems to stem from the belief that there is something about women that is inherently suited to staying home and raising a family. Beyond pregnancy (and possibly lactation) there doesn't seem to be any inherent difference between males and females in the family (aside from historical gender roles). So why should it be women who stay home and look after the family? Besides, it's not like they can have more children if all of the males are off fighting a war.
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They will be home to serve as flight instructors within a few years. They can have as many kids as they like then.
I'm not going to get anymore involved, but I'd like to point out that I'd rather the bolded point should NOT happen. Instructor assignments are probably going to be about 3 months during a time of war, where experienced pilots are needed. If they need more than three months to recoup, then they can **** themselves, because we have a war to fight. About the last thing we need is female pilots getting pregnant, being moved off the flight roster (You cannot instruct people on FJ's when you're pregnant, remember?) And being lost from the pool of available pilots for nine months. Which in turn, means we need to find more instructors, etc and so on.
Nice assumption there. I like how you assume that today's skewed gender ratio (less than half a century after the option became available) is because it 'doesn't appeal to women'.
Today's Air Forces have steadily increasing numbers of women. The female candidates for the Mercury program were far more experienced and capable than the men.
Moreover, it would never happen. It's akin to saying 'with extinction so close, we can't afford to pay our workers. The logical thing to do is to enslave a quarter of the population again.'
Uh, pilots have something in common. They are all attracted to precise manual activities, most notably, hands-on trades. I have never, ever, seen a female carpenter, a female bricklayer, a female draftsmen, or anything of the sort. I know females do work those occupations, but not to the same extent men do. (Fun Fact: A few of the pilots in the ADF were tradies before joining.) And how many female massage therapists are there in contrast to male tradies, and how many would enjoy being pilots?
Women are by no means inferior pilots, their capacity to multitask in fact makes them inherently better at instrument flying than males, or so common sense would say. But in my experience, not as many women desire a career as a pilot. Also, Fast Jets have been open to women for about 20 years now, in Australia, and we haven't had a single female Fast Jet pilot (but we've had female pilots go through No. 2 OCU.)
Also, keep in mind that just because Pilot Training is open to men and women, doesn't mean every little boy and girl is going to pass. You are always going to have people wash out, men, and women. I daresay we'll have enough of both to have happy little Terrans repopulating the universe.
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I have never, ever, seen a female carpenter, a female bricklayer, a female draftsmen, or anything of the sort. I know females do work those occupations, but not to the same extent men do. (Fun Fact: A fair few of the pilots in the ADF were tradies before joining.) And how many female massage therapists are there in contrast to male tradies, and how many would enjoy being pilots?
Women are by no means inferior pilots, their capacity to multitask in fact makes them inherently better at instrument flying than males, or so common sense would say. But in my experience, not as many women desire a career as a pilot. Also, Fast Jets have been open to women for about 20 years now, in Australia, and we haven't had a single female Fast Jet pilot (but we've had female pilots go through No. 2 OCU.)
So the question is, is this something inherent, or is it really just defined by society's gender roles. Frankly I am more inclined to believe it is the latter.
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Dilmah, you are confusing socially defined gender roles with something predetermined.
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Eh, I spoke about what I know, I'll leave you guys to it. ;)
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I spent some time in IRC discussion with Goober500.
While the discussion began productively, I was ultimately taken aback by Goober5000's repeated assertions that Rian's departure was irrational and emotional, which seemed to me to be rooted in a stereotypic view of women. (Rian, when informed, handled these allegations with humor and good grace, and talked about Goober in an understanding and sympathetic way at some length.)
When I pointed out that his grounds for this belief were incorrect, he accepted the correction gracefully, but nonetheless I cannot help but view this as partial confirmation of allegations leveled against him. I am doubly hurt by this because I have strained my own friendships in Goober's defense in the past.
I will review my current status re: HLP and present a decision via appropriate channels. In the meantime, will accept any criticism that people feel is appropriate with humility.
I consider Goober's original argument in this thread to be essentially destroyed. However, his treatment of the issue has raised larger concerns regarding my relationship with Goober5000, Hard Light Productions, and the issue of misogyny which I feel the need to examine. I would like to stress that I do not view this situation as the personal fault of anyone, and it does not impact my personal assessment of anyone involved, especially Goober5000.
Although I believe he evinces evidence of sexism as a deep and unrecognized psychological fixture, this does not make him a bad person, nor does it make him necessarily deserving of condemnation. It would have been easy for me to blow the issue off; it is, after all, not particularly critical to my life to correct the sexist injustice of a fan projection about a fictional science fiction universe. I am, perhaps, too combative for my own good.
My decision to engage with the problem of misogyny here rests in the fact that I believe that a) it caused distress to my loved ones, and that b) Goober5000 firmly believes that this distress is due to a fault with these loved ones and not with his own actions.
In this case, he substituted accusations of hypersensitivity and irrationality for the most basic human consideration that he might be wrong.
What perhaps troubles me most is Goober5000's belief that his words here, since they concern a fictional scenario, do not impact women who read them. This saddens and disappoints me.
it's irrelevant whether it's a boys club or not (I don't doubt it is) -- the point is that her exit was an irrational, emotional retreat
This remark by Goober in particular appears to me to be self-contradictory. He later recanted the statement, but nonetheless I believe it evinces a deeply problematic attitude: the belief that his actions were not hard-hitting and painful, and that, if they were, it was the problem of someone else, and not his responsibility.
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I'm not going to get anymore involved, but I'd like to point out that I'd rather the bolded point should NOT happen. Instructor assignments are probably going to be about 3 months during a time of war, where experienced pilots are needed. If they need more than three months to recoup, then they can **** themselves, because we have a war to fight. About the last thing we need is female pilots getting pregnant, being moved off the flight roster (You cannot instruct people on FJ's when you're pregnant, remember?) And being lost from the pool of available pilots for nine months. Which in turn, means we need to find more instructors, etc and so on.
Instructor assignments are typically handed out on the basis of merit; some people are good at teaching what they know, others are intuitively skilled and so cannot offer their skills to others. There are classroom instructor posistions, and this is an environment with advanced simulator training indistingushable from reality; it would not be difficult to have an instructor "backseat" for a pilot undergoing simulated or even live training while not being actually in the cockpit. (In truth it's probably quite possible to manage a complete virtual copy of any combat craft's environment to allow other personnel to assist the pilot; we can actually do such a thing now if we try. Chronicling a pilot program for such is a thing would make for an interesting campaign.)
As we know nothing about the GTVA's pilot rotation policies this statement is completely without factual basis. The best guess we can make is that the GTVA is unlikely to push a combat tour of duty longer than three months, as historically this has been the limit before unacceptable degradation of skills sets in, and pushing them beyond three months typically results in someone who can never safely be returned to combat when they come off the line.
However, other pressures must be accounted for. The GTVA is pitted against the threat of species-wide annihilation. Their need for trained personnel and capable pilots means that they will almost certainly go to great lengths to retain both. Liberal maternity leave policy is almost assured. Post-Capella a need for more of everything, quickly, means that the existing GTVA forces can probably only be regarded as cadre for a new and significantly larger force structure. The GTVA would almost certainly offer instructor jobs to whoever wanted them.
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However, other pressures must be accounted for. The GTVA is pitted against the threat of species-wide annihilation. Their need for trained personnel and capable pilots means that they will almost certainly go to great lengths to retain both. Liberal maternity leave policy is almost assured. Post-Capella a need for more of everything, quickly, means that the existing GTVA forces can probably only be regarded as cadre for a new and significantly larger force structure. The GTVA would almost certainly offer instructor jobs to whoever wanted them.
That's correct, but if, like I said, they were all buggering off on maternity leave, we're going to have some problems, pilot wise.
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Combat pilots can start at 19 and be out by peak fertility. No problems at all.
Never mind that it's COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT. If every female combat pilot was forcibly sterilized, it would have no effect demographically. There aren't enough to make a difference.
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They can start training at 17, over here, actually. (If you have a really late birthday :p ) It's something like 21 or 22 over there for you guys, since your boys and girls need to be degree qualified.
But if it's during a war, and we're having our pilots come off the front lines for an instructor posting for three months, and hey, four of the girls show up pregnant, we've now lost four instructors who need to be replaced, four pilots who are most likely not going to be heading back to the front for the next 1-2 years, and about <900 hours of combat experience between the four of them. If this keeps happening, we are going to have a problem.
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Never mind that it's COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT. If every female combat pilot was forcibly sterilized, it would have no effect demographically. There aren't enough to make a difference.
I like to think that contraceptives are mandatory for people male or female serving in active combat posistions, but I doubt such a thing will ever fly in reality.
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Oh, I don't know. I saw birth control pills on the list for women heading off to Officer Training School.
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Oh, I don't know. I saw birth control pills on the list for women heading off to Officer Training School.
Yes.
But will they ever demand oral contraceptives for males, as well?
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They'd only really need to if the laws on paternity leave ever match those for maternity leave. AFAIK you can't get out of the army durin war time just cause you have a kid on the way. If you could the entire population of south Vietnam would probably be half Caucasian . :p
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(http://i48.tinypic.com/2zxw5l4.jpg)
This whole thread.
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(http://i48.tinypic.com/2zxw5l4.jpg)
This whole thread.
It all started from voice acting roles....
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I applaud Goober5000. As Orwell said: "In a time of universal deceit — telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
Anyone read SF classic William Tenn's (Philip Klass) - "Down Among The Dead" novel?
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I applaud Goober5000. As Orwell said: "In a time of universal deceit — telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
Is this sarcasm?
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Nope.
In times of ideologically forced counter-natural way of things, saying what Goober said, is as we can see a revolutionary (and for some revolting) act.
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I applaud Goober5000. As Orwell said: "In a time of universal deceit — telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
Anyone read SF classic William Tenn's (Philip Klass) - "Down Among The Dead" novel?
You know, it's not a good idea to suddenly jump to the defense of an indefensible position after it has already been completely defeated.
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I applaud Goober5000. As Orwell said: "In a time of universal deceit — telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
Anyone read SF classic William Tenn's (Philip Klass) - "Down Among The Dead" novel?
You know, it's not a good idea to suddenly jump to the defense of an indefensible position after it has already been completely defeated.
If quantity of interlocutors agreeing with your POV is a way to measure "winning" or "losing" a discussion, then maybe so.
Still, you got to spill what you really believe in, no matter if this time people don't agree with you.
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Okay, then. Post a complete reasoning as to why you think Goober is right and everyone else is wrong, preferably backed up by scientific data.
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I said what i had to say in this topic and I shall not speak on this matter anymore.
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Oh, so you're taking the route of baseless controversial statement completely unsupported by anything resembling evidence. Don't expect anyone to take you seriously.
EDIT: Has anyone considered the social consequences of throwing males at the enemy until they are almost completely annihilated? Not only do wars cripple or kill people, they also drive them insane, especially meat-grinder wars (which is what happens when you create huge numbers of unskilled, undertrained personnel and just throw them at the enemy). So now 80% of your men are dead and another 10% are disabled or driven mad by PTSD or other mental illnesses. An entire generation of women have been deprived of any significant education or job skills for the purpose of turning them into baby factories. So now you have hardly any skilled people left, a society with a huge number of children that will probably never get an education and essentially have no future, and a deep misogyny introduced into the culture that will probably remain for a long time because such things tend to develop a momentum of their own. The result will be social chaos (expect a lot of those kids to become criminals), economic collapse (because you killed half the skilled workers and turned the other half into walking uteri), and probably the end of a space-faring Terran civilization for decades at least.
You know, things that didn't happen in the actual FS timeline because they didn't turn all their women into baby factories and obsess over numbers instead of quality of personnel.
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It's a political statement. He thinks something in this thread involves political correctness sohe's just going to lash out at it without thought.
Anyway, I'm still not sure what to do about this. I want to reduce my chances of being entangled in one of these incidents again. And for better or worse the entire website is colored by Goob's opinions, whether or not he's just one person.
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Well, to be frank, his opinions are progressive and enlightened compared to what ShadowGorrath has said to me.
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That's certainly fair. In both cases, however, the opinions are forcing us to reconsider our relationship with said individual.
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Sooo drama over?
Lock or move to general discussion instead of general freespace discussion? :nod:
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This thread is still bugging the hell out of me for any number of reasons, most of which I doubt I'll be able to verbalize. Battuta, I never meant to suggest by my previous post (which was borne mostly out of utter frustration at seeing what this thread had become) that I could dictate what reactions you should or shouldn't be having at any particular time; I hope you'll give me enough credit to recognize that I don't view myself as the Arbiter of All Human Emotions. However, my lack of understanding about what spurred all of this on in the first place still remains, and I don't think it's something I could clear up on my own. Hell, for all I know, listening to some degree of explanation might not do anything useful either, as it may be tied to completely-different personal mindsets.
(And while I agree that one can split one's concern between different issues, I do feel like keeping the relative severity and immediacy of each in mind can only be a good thing. I also have to wonder about just how far one can spread one's attention before too much focus is lost on a particular issue, but maybe that's a YMMV situation.)
The other thing that's niggling at me is your reaction to Goober's comment about his feelings regarding Rian's last post. Color me confused, but I don't follow how Goober's use of what may be construed as a "buzzword" necessitates some over-arching commentary on Rian's gender, or why it would engender a response of "sympathy." To be perfectly honest, her post left me with somewhat of a raised eyebrow as well, but it certainly had nothing to do with whether or not she was female. (Hell, from where I sit at my desk, she may as well be a member of the mysterious Fifth Internet Gender for all I know.) I mean...this is the Internet, and if you've been here long enough, you know how it generally works. You will get insulted, you will get belittled, and you will have get in someone get in your face about something inane. Pretty much the only choices you have are to either throw in the towel and head off, or else give as good as you get where you can and shrug your shoulders at the rest. And maybe it's just me, but the first option doesn't seem to net you much, since you're letting a few people's idiocy dictate the loss of what is potentially a large amount of personal enjoyment.
Like I said at the start, Battuta, I think much of my problem with all of this stems from ideological differences, differences that even a significant amount of dialogue might not do much to bridge. It's fairly clear that both you and Rian place a great deal of value on certain sociological concepts and apply them in your daily lives. In contrast, even when I do think about said concepts (which is very rarely), I place little stock in them, and I feel no worse off for having done so. What you may view as a significant issue to be addressed I'll probably wind up overlooking entirely. Where that leaves everyone in the end, I don't know. What I do know is that I sincerely hope that you don't allow one string of posts by one person in one thread negatively color years of involvement with a community. No one gains anything by throwing that all away, but we all lose a great deal.
(And just to throw it out there, I'd have no qualms about seeing this locked, but I'll defer to you to determine if there's any merit left in keeping it open.)
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You place no stock in them because you don't have to. You don't work in a profession where a significant percentage of your workload is burned off by the need to combat sexism. Women in graduate physics have been studied extensively, and we have data demonstrating that they do more work but receive less recognition than their male counterparts. On a broader social level, you do not understand what it is like to be a woman on the Internet, where your worth is characterized by certain very specific features which are not those by which men are evaluated.
Sexism doesn't matter to you because it doesn't affect you. You don't have to give a ****.
Rian, on the other hand, either has to ignore it or remove it. Given how massively busy she is (political science, physics, and creative writing programs simultaneously, not to mention her athletics and the litmag she runs) she has zero time to waste fighting assholes on the Internet.
Yet her time on HLP has been characterized by something you do not understand: this is a corrosive, misogynistic environment, in the way that most all-male environments are. You cannot recognize that in the way she can. At some point she has to make a choice as to whether the minimal benefits of her time here are worth the constant sidelong attacks.
(You've seen the cluster****s in GenDisc when, for example, America or religion are targeted by backhanded criticism. Now imagine something far more constant, pervasive, and accepted, and with far fewer people who give a **** about stopping it.)
If she chooses not to tolerate it any longer, that's her prerogative. You have no reason to accuse her of emotionality or irrationality about it. I was there when she made her decision, and it was carefully considered and not remotely hysterical.
You don't get it, but what's more troubling is that you don't get that you don't get it. You think you can be neutral on the topic, but 'neutrality' is a position of its own, and when that neutrality regards a problematic status quo, then that neutrality is problematic.
So yeah, I would gain something by leaving, the same thing Rian did: a reprieve from the need to attempt to fix what is essentially an unfixable problem, and from the need to put up with problematic behavior from people who do not understand why it is problematic.
Remember, I am a scientist and I work in this field. My opinions on the topic are rooted in data and research. You can find all the politically motivated critiques you want, but in the end, what matters to me is data.
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Intolerance sucks! :P
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And, again, it's not like Rian gives a crap. She didn't ragequit. She shrugged, made her parting shot, and left. This is hardly a big deal to her. The costs of participating in this community just outweighed the benefits, and the reason for that was because she felt the community leadership was not one she could comfortably work with.
When you put up with this crap for long enough you get used to it, and you know when you're not going to get anything but grief out of it. That's not a lesson that I've learned as well.
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What's happened to HLP? Seriously?
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I'm always suprised at how much Mongoose and I seem to think alike.
When Mongoose posts something, I just don't have too anymore :D
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HLP has gone downhill recently. Someone's definitely been putting something in the water. Or everyone's just been eating some really bad sushi.
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I'm going to split this useless **** out if it does not stop.
I'm still trying to figure out what to do.
I recently had a reasonable, rational conversation on the topic of gender with TrashMan. Meanwhile I'm going to have to beat off the MS+ individuals here with a stick. I feel like everything has undergone a bizarre inversion.
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HLP has gone downhill recently. Someone's definitely been putting something in the water. Or everyone's just been eating some really bad sushi.
Wait, what? :p
This thread needs lightening up. (http://www.emergencyyodel.com/)
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I'm going to split this useless **** out if it does not stop.
I'm still trying to figure out what to do.
I recently had a reasonable, rational conversation on the topic of gender with TrashMan. Meanwhile I'm going to have to beat off the MS+ individuals here with a stick. I feel like everything has undergone a bizarre inversion.
Hey I didn't say anything!
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This is getting flat-out ridiculous.
Do you even see what you're doing, Battuta? Really see it? Someone makes an even-handed, in-good-faith post to try to figure out where to go from here...and you **** all over them. I don't really appreciate that. Not at all. If this is your idea of engendering sympathy or understanding, you've got another thing coming.
I "don't get that I don't get it"? What the ****? How does dishing out that level of inanity help me, or anyone for that matter? It seems like you've done little but stand on a pedestal and pontificate about all of this instead of engaging in an honest-to-God back-and-forth. We're all normal human beings in here; let's discuss it as such. And if we can't do that, to hell with discussion.
You want some real, grounded advice? You're never going to change the hearts and minds of the masses. It doesn't work like that, least of all around here. Either you stick it out until society starts swinging toward whatever end it is you want, or you go hole up in a cabin in the woods somewhere. I really don't care either way. But I'll be damned if I'm going to sit here and have **** flung in my pace for...actually, I don't even know what the **** it's for. For daring to be born male?
Oh, and here's a general word toward you, or Rian, or whoever. I'm part of a group of online friends that's split about 50/50 between males and females, if the females don't have the flat-out majority. The females in this group are "women on the Internet"...and you know what? They do just fine. They can more than hold their own when things get sexually-charged; hell, a few of them can dish it out far better than any of us males can. They're a very diverse group of people, and yet they manage just fine without wailing or gnashing of teeth. So what makes Rian's case so unique? Why can these other people hack it in this sort of environment when she can't?
I know women on the Internet. I had good female friends at school in the hard sciences. I've talked to both at length for years. So don't speak down to me and treat me like I'm a member of the ignorant head-up-my-ass caste who has no concept of struggle or ingrained prejudice or whatever-the-hell.
Bottom line? The world is a ****ing awful place, and we all take different types and degrees of **** from it. But you know what most of us do? We deal with it. So really, your wringing of hands is lost on me.
Yes, I am pissed. And you want to know why? Because I greatly respect you as an individual, and right now, I have someone I respect giving me **** when there wasn't an ounce of negative intent behind what I said. So just tell me: what is it you want to hear me say? Because I apparently sure as hell can't figure it out on my own.
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Thank you, Mongoose, you've helped me clarify my position. Apparently my earlier concern that I was simply disruptive is correct. It is clear that I cannot express myself clearly enough to avoid reactions like yours. I am disappointed in myself for being unable to present my case in a way that you could understand or that avoided personal affront.
I am hurt by the fact that this turned into an emotional discussion about general ideological issues. I wish I had presented my points better so that you would have been able to understand them instead of being threatened by them.
Please refer to this post (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=68032.msg1343414#msg1343414) for a summary of my concerns, some of which you actually echoed.
I will contact an administrator about removing my moderator status. I will make a decision on whether to complete my obligations to Blue Planet in the near future.
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I urge you to reconsider, Battuta. It's not something constant; it's just one discussion out of many that was dragged on further than it should have been. It happens at HLP, and on the Internet in general.
To an outisder, it did not seem that harsh. I mean, the discussion as a whole, not specific posts.
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As I believe the linked post made clear, my concern is in part the amount of time and energy that I put into these conflicts, and even my role in causing them. The problem is not exclusively with others.
I like to believe that I am more fair-minded than most, and when problems arise, I look at myself first.
I want to reduce the probability of this happening again.
And as I think I have made clear - and as I tried to explain to Goober, who patronizingly suggested he was 'concerned' about Rian because 'one thread had such an impact on her' - this is not a single thread. These concerns stretch back across my entire time at HLP, spanning multiple threads and touching on elements as disparate as the Silent Threat Reborn wingman personas and the amount of leeway iamzack is sometimes given in moderation.
And, to reiterate: the fact that something is commonplace does not mean it is acceptable. I am a researcher in the field of stereotype, prejudice, and attitudes, and I am far more aware of the mechanisms at play than most. It is not easy for me to tolerate things that I used to blow off as harmless.
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On a broader social level, you do not understand what it is like to be a woman on the Internet, where your worth is characterized by certain very specific features which are not those by which men are evaluated.
I don't think anyone is contesting that. I certantly don't know how it feels to be a woman, you certanly don't know how it feels to be a man.
Men and women are different, and recieve different treatment in different cultures over different time periods. Such things have always been in flux.
You getting a raw deal? Yeah, the few perks you get don't seem enough to overcompensate the negatives, but it's changing. Slowly. There's really not much any one person can do to speed up the process. A society doesn't change over night...
I wish it was different. Hopefully one day it will be. Soon.
At some point she has to make a choice as to whether the minimal benefits of her time here are worth the constant sidelong attacks.
This is universal to everyone. I've been thinking of quiting HLP a few times myself - for a bit different reasons, but running into d**** on the net is part of the internet package. Nobody wants that, yet there's really nothing to be done about it.
Deciding to leave is not irrational. Sometimes you just go "f*** it!"
EDIT: Quiting forum moderating? For this? Aren't you a bit overacting GB?
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I appreciate your post, TrashMan. I think it's very fair.
As I've said, my reasons are not confined to this thread. In addition to long-standing issues with gender on HLP (just like in other primarily male groups I interact with), I spent a long time in IRC conversation with Goober5000, a person who shapes the tone of the community and my relationship with it.
I am concerned about the amount of disruption I cause. Furthermore, because my 'patron' for moderator status was Goober5000, I am not entirely sure I can comfortably continue in the position as I feel an obligation to him.
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Goober, your argument seems to stem from the belief that there is something about women that is inherently suited to staying home and raising a family.
I don't actually think he said that. Or did he? Best we not start reading too much into things.
That said, while men have some advantages over women as soldiers, those advantages are not insurmantable. It's not like that makes women incapable of combat. And in times of trouble, everyone pitches in.
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I had written a rather more harsh reply to you Battuta, but your last few posts have diffused the situation. All I will say is that if anyone chooses to leave the Freespace community over a thread like this, then so be it. It has happened many times before, and the community has always recovered from it in the long run.
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I appreciate your post, TrashMan. I think it's very fair.
As I've said, my reasons are not confined to this thread. In addition to long-standing issues with gender on HLP (just like in other primarily male groups I interact with), I spent a long time in IRC conversation with Goober5000, a person who shapes the tone of the community and my relationship with it.
I am concerned about the amount of disruption I cause. Furthermore, because my 'patron' for moderator status was Goober5000, I am not entirely sure I can comfortably continue in the position as I feel an obligation to him.
Come on GB. All you did was express a perfectly legitimate view.
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I had written a rather more harsh reply to you Battuta, but your last few posts have diffused the situation. All I will say is that if anyone chooses to leave the Freespace community over a thread like this, then so be it. It has happened many times before, and the community has always recovered from it in the long run.
Respectfully, the decision is mine, and while you are free to pass judgment, you also must be aware that you are not privy to my perspective.
I considered posting the full chatlogs from my conversation with Goober5000 but felt that it was unethical.
I am amused by your reaction, because I did not express an intent to leave the community.
Have I not by now made it clear that a single thread is not the issue?
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I am amused by your reaction, because I did not express an intent to leave the community.
I find it hard to read your statement about having your moderator status revoked and possibly not completing your obligations to BP any other way.
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I haven't made that decision yet. In any case, were I to decide to leave, it would be a decision made for my own well-being, not a gesture towards the community (whether positive or negative.)
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HLP has gone downhill recently. Someone's definitely been putting something in the water. Or everyone's just been eating some really bad sushi.
One thing I think is different is that we only have three active admins (and Fury hardly posts anymore). We used to have eight--Goober, Setekh, Karajorma, Styxx, Shrike, Fury, Sandwich, and Kalfireth.
I think we might need to nominate a new admin or three. If anyone cares about my suggestions, I would think General Battuta (yeah, I know about stepping down but you're a damn good moderator, and perhaps you could combine your professional understanding of prejudice with more authority to do some good), Axem, chief1983, and Galemp would make good candidates.
Edit: Forgot Fury due to his almost unnoticeably small avatar.
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I've abstained from participation here since a few pages ago, but I think I should address something that Battuta has done with his many points of misogyny. I'm not trying to kick a sleeping rottweiler, but I'm just curious. You said that all of these issues were taken from the entirety of your time at the HLP. If this is true, why didn't you address these concerns before, instead of venting them all at once in an explosive gunnysacking? Holding in problems and then throwing them out onto the table all at once is rather destructive and I think it could have been avoided had you expressed your lack of comfort with this situation previously.
Like I said before, I'm not choosing to refute anything you've said, but wouldn't it have been a better idea to address the issues as they came instead of letting them swell up and become one big, intimidating problem that will take a lot longer to cut down to size?
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I've expressed the problem many times before, in threads you were not active in. I've spoken to the admins before.
Don't assume.
The fact is that there's very little that can be done about the issue, by anyone, no matter how well intentioned.
Moreover, while I've said that this is rooted in a general trend, I have made it very clear that my specific problem right now is my discomfort with serving in an administrative or sub-administrative role on a website whose leadership espouses these views. That is a specific claim.
Your choice to use terms like 'explosive gunnysacking', 'swell up', and 'rather destructive' is unfortunate and betrays a regrettable lack of understanding. Of course you can't be expected to have the full picture, but grant me a measure of credit.
I've outlined the problems I have, and they are as much with my own conduct as with anyone else's. If that degree of self-awareness isn't getting across perhaps I need to outline it again?
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I don't think you can get away with it wherever you go, in the Internet or real life. It's a pervasive, society-wide problem that will take decades if not centuries to resolve. HLP is any worse than other sites I've been to in terms of sexism.
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Quite so.
Ironically I wish I'd handled this more like Rian. She's asked me not to pass on any of her commentary on the matter, but everything she's said about it has been so remarkably calm and fair-minded that I sort of want to shove it in Goob's face in a distinctly juvenile way.
For perspective, Goob believed she was departing solely because of the content of this thread, when in fact she was effectively resigning from an endless and unending series of misogyny threads going back years. This one just involved a site admin, and so became significantly more severe.
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I don't think leaving HLP will change anything for you. It's just a symptom of a problem that's everywhere. As a supermod, you have at least some capacity to fight this (although you are not really in a position to fight Goober, of course) and reduce the extent of it. If you think this is bad, I've been to forums (and not even imageboard-related communities, I avoid those like the black death) where people ask women to post nude pictures of themselves to prove that they are female.
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That might be so, but I will reiterate Rian's reasoning:
With so much going on in my life right now, and so much possibility to put my (considerable) talents to work in achieving some really brilliant stuff, I cannot justify spending time on these misogyny debates. And so I want to take action to reduce my chances of becoming entangled in them.
I've already submitted my resignation. I think my most epic moment was probably handling the return of Derek Smart. I'm kind of bummed that's not in Classics, actually.
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I wasn't making any accusations. Just trying to get a clearer picture and be sure that you had thought this through. I know this now and apologize for questioning it. I just like to be sure that what I see is what I get, that's all.
Sorry about that, Battuta.
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Let me straighten up some things here.
1) My statement that Rian's withdrawal from the thread was "irrational and emotional" did not come out of left field, nor was it "rooted in a stereotypic view of women". It was a direct response to Battuta on IRC, when he asserted that Rian's withdrawal from the thread was "rational and calm". It's disingenuous to make an assertion, and then demand an apology when that assertion is contradicted.
2) The "irrational and emotional" statement was based on specific things Rian said in her second-to-last post (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=68032.msg1343347#msg1343347), such as questioning my "authority on which to make this claim", and her last post (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=68032.msg1343364#msg1343364), which is textbook ragequitting behavior: fail to address the argument, withdraw from the thread, and leave an insult behind you. Battuta pointed out that one of my assertions (that Rian didn't address the "prefer extinction" opinion) was incorrect, so I conceded that point. However, that does not invalidate the argument as a whole.
3) Battuta claims that my argument "has been thoroughly trashed" based on his demographic calculations from Operation Thresher and the Epsilon Pegasi massacre. While these calculations are useful and illustrative of the casualties suffered in space-based warfare, he neglected to take into account the losses from ground-based warfare. Unfortunately, we have no specific numbers on ground casualties, but we do have plenty of clues. We know that the Harbinger, a warhead with a 5000 megaton payload (300,000 times the yield at Hiroshima), was used for planetary bombardment during the Great War. We also know that the Lucifer's beam cannons "have been seen bombarding colonized worlds". While not as dramatic as the Vasuda Prime bombardment, these undoubtedly caused casualties in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions. Finally, Battuta ignores the specific figure of 4 billion lives lost at Vasuda Prime.
4) Neither the HLP website nor the administration is "colored by my opinions"; my professional ability to administrate a website or moderate a forum is independent of whatever personal conclusions I reach on a fictional scenario. Even the fact that I recruited Battuta to be a global moderator is irrelevant; I expect him to think and act for himself. He shouldn't feel any obligation to me personally; any obligation should be to the forum as a whole, or to himself. Indeed, we couldn't even have this public debate if my status as an administrator had a chilling effect on the forum. Few people in the forum share my conclusions anyway.
5) I still fail to understand how any discussion in this thread, or even the opinions people hold in general, should have any effect on Battuta's participation in HLP overall. Battuta, correct me if I'm wrong, but are you really saying that you are incapable of working with people who hold opinions different from yours? It smells of passive-aggressive behavior to me. Karajorma and I hold substantially different political opinions but we work together all the time. I wish you wouldn't resign your global moderatorship or your participation in Blue Planet; you are an asset to the HLP community.
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I am concerned about the amount of disruption I cause. Furthermore, because my 'patron' for moderator status was Goober5000, I am not entirely sure I can comfortably continue in the position as I feel an obligation to him.
Actually it was me who put you forward for the position not Goober.
*Raises the defensive shields*
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O rly? :confused:
Kara and I have made Lobo and General Battuta global moderators.
Hmm, maybe it was a joint decision. I don't recall the details.
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5) I still fail to understand how any discussion in this thread, or even the opinions people hold in general, should have any effect on Battuta's participation in HLP overall. Battuta, correct me if I'm wrong, but are you really saying that you are incapable of working with people who hold opinions different from yours? It smells of passive-aggressive behavior to me. Karajorma and I hold substantially different political opinions but we work together all the time. I wish you wouldn't resign your global moderatorship or your participation in Blue Planet; you are an asset to the HLP community.
This kind of action is what troubles me, and what I would like to move away from.
If you've read the posts I made above, then you should see something that I've repeated time and again about my decision. See if you can find it and identify it.
I'll give you a hint: it's something that you have not at any point made an effort to do.
And you're right, I am an asset. I'm damn good at what I do. It's a shame that you make a habit of losing or driving away those assets with your personal conduct.
(And on the factual 'ground warfare' side? Give me a break. We're talking about barring women from the pilot corps here. It should be abundantly clear by now that if the casualties are as high as you suggest, women in the military are not going to make any difference. Even with World War I levels of ground casualties and women in 25% of those roles, it is still demographically insignificant. Imagine that?)
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O rly? :confused:
Definitely. I checked the logs. You told me that Jeff Vader had volunteered already and I suggested Battuta.
I was more than willing to handle bringing him on board but since you were already doing the same thing for Jeff Vader and I had a Diaspora Dev Blog post to make I left it to you.
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With the Shivans, the male/female ratio would be completely irrelevant anyway because of the Shivan policy of total genocide. The window of opportunity in which the Shivans can be defeated before completely overrunning Terran space is far too small for baby-farms to return on their investment, and civilians are not safe at home--the Shivans will destroy anything Terran, and civilians are if anything, less safe cowering in their cities, installations, or transports as the Shivans vaporize them than the soldiers, crewmen, and pilots are.
As for the Terran-Vasudan war, evidence points towards ground operations having largely ceased by the end of the war, and for the pressures on the GTA and PVE being economic rather than demographic. The game implies that both empires are essentially broke and have resorted to relatively low-intensity engagements like Operation Thresher for the most part (one Orion per year or less as indicated by the Typhon description is rather tame compared to the slaughter of the Great War or even the NTF engagement). Under these circumstances, baby farms would not be helpful or desirable.
Women would be far more useful fighting the enemy or working to support the war effort in other capacities (such as industrial work) than making hordes of babies the GTA cannot support (and, in the case of a Shivan conflict, the Shivans would just incinerate anyway long before they grew up).
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We've made these points again and again. Goober5000's argument has been destroyed at every turn. His latest assertion, that orbital bombardment or nuclear attacks could cause a demographic crisis, is essentially a last-ditch effort.
The death of billions requires a demographic response. Terrans would be encouraged to have large families.
The loss of breeding-age females to the pilot corps and the naval officer corps would have absolutely no impact on this effort.
We have pointed out, again and again, that removing 50% of your top skill echelon is absurdly counterproductive. This argument has not apparently registered.
Another aspect of this thread has apparently not registered with Goober5000, which is that I am attempting to reduce the odds of becoming involved in unending, futile, ideologically motivated debates like this one.
Were he to show a similar commitment and tendency to self-examination and self-critique, perhaps things might have been different.
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baby-farms
I never heard that term before, but for some reason it sounds disturbing. I know what you mean though. Also, just preserving or creating more members of a species seems to lack a point. Preserving individuals that exist already sounds more appealing to me. Heck, just create robots to do most of the fighting against Shivans like terminators and that will save a lot of lives maybe :p I would expect the GTVA to be able to do that, though it can't storywise because that would ruin gameplay, I guess.
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What Goober described is essentially a system of baby farms where women are used to farm babies for the military. With a lead time that will be well over a decade, even if you use child soldiers (the children must still be old enough to handle weapons, control military hardware, and fight effectively). Making your soldiers to order is really a horrible idea.
With an enemy intent on massacring your entire population, farming babies to bolster the population is futile because they will just be massacred along with everyone else. The only hope of survival is to focus every available resource, including human resources, on defeating the enemy before your people are completely annihilated. Baby farms will divert human, financial, technological, and other resources away from this end and hasten the demise of the human race. Rebuilding the population can wait until after the enemy has been defeated.
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Perhaps excelerated growth and learning ability like the clones in Star Wars would be good. I think creating robots would be the ideal choice though.
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Robots are really the only way to get made-to-order soldiers. Robots would also probably be superior to human soldiers if they had the intelligence of, say, a dog and some human officers to direct them because they would have massively more strength, endurance, and agility than a human of the same size. Humans are extremely weak creatures.
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Don't forget their extreme durability to force and heat, radiation, etc, which is also vert important.
Edit: Now let's add carbon nanotube tech to the robots to boost.
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I have elected to leave Hard Light for the time being. If I return to continue work on Blue Planet in the weeks or months to come, I may continue to post in public forums as well.
None of my efforts to resolve the problem have succeeded, and even my most resolute attempts to take a share of the blame apparently came across as passive-aggressive.
I am profoundly grateful for the opportunities that have been presented me, but I think it would be wise to invest time in more rewarding and less painful aspects of my life.
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For what it's worth, Battuta, your desire to leave is understandable. I wish you all the best.
I'm having difficulty thinking of a more catastrophic way this debate could have ended. Your departure is the harshest blow to this community in a very long time. I'm really sorry.
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We will miss you greatly, Battuta. The FreeSpace community is diminished by your departure. I'm sorry that it couldn't have ended in a better way. :(
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:wtf:
By all accounts, I'd best describe this thread as a cluster-f*ck. Seriously.
This thread began as a split from the Transcend VA Call over a simple debate over the ligitimacy of a "canon" figure for gender ratios in the GTVA, an organization which is not real. In doing so, we have managed to seriously offend a very decent person in real life, as well as his significant other.
[sarcasm]
Really, fine job people...
[/sarcasm]
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I dare say: But Bat always seems to over react and obsess with gender equality and even creates a topic based on it like he has some issues. I can't say I feel bad. It is getting too obsessive. Anyone else feel that it gets old?
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I've spoken to Battuta before on a similar subject (reacting to other's positions and views), Max, but no one was getting beat out of shape then.
To an active moderator, I'd request we shut this one down until further notice. Keeping this thread open longer will imaginably just ruffle more feathers.
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I dare say: But Bat always seems to over react and obsess with gender equality and even creates a topic based on it like he has some issues. I can't say I feel bad. It is getting too obsessive. Anyone else feel that it gets old?
Misogyny is an issue that's as old as recorded history, Max. If you wanted to call it old, you would just be redundant. And ignored.
I agree, let's close this painful discussion before anyone else is forced into speaking on it.
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Why this wasn't closed as soon as it was split from its original topic is beyond me. This topic accomplished nothing but endangering the future of BP2. Thank you very much.
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Looking back, I should have just done it outright, whether it stepped on anyone's toes or not.
(Battuta, if you're still looking here, I'll get back to your PM ASAP.)
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I dare say: But Bat always seems to over react and obsess with gender equality and even creates a topic based on it like he has some issues. I can't say I feel bad. It is getting too obsessive. Anyone else feel that it gets old?
Yeah. The last thing we need is someone constantly dragging every single topic he posts in around to the same tired old topic.
Oh wait.